Facebook Inc. reportedly is going to be the first technology company which is in the process to develop a cryptocurrency that will enable Whatsapp Users to transfer money through the app, according to a recent report released in Bloomberg. With more than $40 billion annual revenue & around 2.5 billion users across the globe, Facebook has a better chance of making a stablecoin that sticks.
Facebook sees tremendous growth in India; therefore, it would first focus on the remittances of the India market, according to the report since the remittances of the Indian market is significant. The country reportedly received around 69 million dollars in 2017 in as foreign remittance i.e., 2.8% of the nation’s GDP, according to the data from the World Bank.
Also, Whatsapp has a widespread market in India with more than 200 million users across the country. As per the last year’s data, the number of users in rural India doubled because of the reduced cost of internet in the nation.
A boom of crypto projects based on Stablecoins in the past year. Also, the idea behind Stablecoin was to create a digital coin that would be more consistent unlike Bitcoin and easier to use in daily transactions. Therefore, it is believed that a company is developing “stablecoin” – a virtual currency pegged to U.S. Dollar to curtail volatility, said the people.
Sources further added that coin could be released anytime. The company is still in the process of building its strategy on custody assets that would be responsible for holding the value of stablecoin consistently. Facebook’s has significantly changed its perspective towards cryptocurrency in last year.
After David Marcus (former PayPal President) joined Facebook Messenger app, the company has been expected to extend a move in financial services, thereby introducing financial services to Messenger as well as primary application. He became the head of blockchain initiatives in May.
Facebook then started hiring spree and formed blockchain exploratory team of 40 people. That time, Marcus was also a board member of crypto exchange and wallet service Coinbase at San- Francisco. Marcus said, “I’m setting up a small group to explore how to best leverage blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch.” But lately, Marcus resigned from Coinbase in August.
The reason for leaving Coinbase explained by him, “Because of the new group I’m setting up at Facebook around blockchain, I’ve decided it was appropriate for me to resign…”.
A crypto ban ad designed to prevent ads promoting financial products or services associated with misleading deceptive promotional practices was published on social media network in January 2018. But Facebook repealed the ban on crypto ads by withdrawing its ban on the promotion of initial coin offerings in June 2018. This is how Facebook began to explore different ways to leverage the blockchain technology.